Game 1 preview: McLellan and Babcock offer their perspectives on rivalry, Draper a scratch

Next, something from both coaches and we’ll start with Mike Babcock because he did clarify the one question mark in his starting lineup.

Drew Miller is in, Kris Draper is out. That gives Detroit a fourth line of Miller, Darren Helm and Patrick Eaves.

Babcock also confirmed that he’d start the game with a top line that could — if we’re being honest here — create real problems for the Sharks: Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg and Tomas Holmstrom.

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A year ago at this time, Babcock kept Datsyuk and Zetterberg on different lines and he offered an explanation today why they’ll be starting on the same one.

“We’re a deeper team down the middle than we were this time last year because of the growth of Helm and (Justin) Abdelkader and so we don’t have to play them apart,” Babcock said. “Last year at this time we felt we had to.”

How long he’ll keep Datsyuk and Zetterberg together, of course, depends on how things are going.

“We start with a plan and that plan’s usually good until the first or second shift and then you’re ready to adjust it,” Detroit’s coach said. “Whoever is playing the best gets on the ice and if it’s working good you keep them together, if it’s not working good you keep them apart.”

****Both coaches talked about the rivalry between Detroit and San Jose as one more of mutual respect rather than the hate that can develop between teams.

“I know Detroit isn’t about dropping the gloves and fighting and getting involved that way,” the Sharks coach continued, “so some of that emotion, that hatred if you will for lack of a better term, doesn’t exist that way. But the fact of it is that they can play extremely hard on pucks and so can we. There’s a lot of action that happens around the blue paint and those are real competitive situations.”

A Detroit reporter made the point that the Red Wings aren’t involved in as many scrums as some other teams and asked Babcock if that was something he preached or just the natural order of things.

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“Our skill set in scrums isn’t the same as some other teams so there’s no sense in being in them,” he responded. “Saying that, to me that’s a waste of energy right now. We need the energy to play between the whistles and compete hard.”

Babcock also talked about agitation and penalties.

“I don’t think agitation’s a big deal, but I think the penalties are a huge deal,” he said. “Last year in this series, if I’m not mistaken we had three guys on the ice for three or four of their goals. You can’t be in the penalty box and some of our penalties last year, especially in this building, were where your stick flips and you hit a guy. It had nothing to do with the game and it cost your team big-time.”

Along those same lines, McLellan talked about the need for the Sharks power play to be a lot better than the meager 8.7 percent success rate it had against Los Angeles.

“LA, one of the top penalty kill units going into the playoffs, did a really good job so we have to give them some credit,” McLellan said. “But I also thought we were a little slow and a little lethargic as far as the thought process went. We spent more time thinking than reacting.

“When you do that you’re a fraction slow and the penalty kill becomes better,” he continued. “We can’t play like that in this series. We’re going to have to rely on our power play for some of our offense. Do I expect it to get better? Absolutely.”

David Pollak

David Pollak has been following the NHL forever and at the Mercury News as an editor or reporter since 1987. For almost a decade he wrote about the Sharks as the paper's Fan in the Stands before joining the sports department in 2001. He became the Sharks beat writer before the 2007-08 season and began this blog at that time. You can also follow him on Twitter at @PollakOnSharks.

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